The Spectacular Spider-Man: "The Uncertainty Principle"Review

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The Green Goblin/Tombstone war heated up.

By Eric Goldman

This was an especially busy installment of Spectacular Spider-Man - It's amazing how much this show packs into 22 minutes. This one episode had large roles for Tombstone, Green Goblin and Hammerhead, yet still managed to also feature the set ups for larger roles down the line for Black Cat and a certain goopy black symbiote-wearing villain.

Season 1 of the show is taking us through fall of Peter's junior year, and it was Halloween this time out. First off, kudos to the designers for giving Mary Jane a vampire costume that wasn't inappropriate for Saturday morning TV and yet, let's face it, was incredibly sexy. As for Peter, he found himself dressed as, well… Spider-Man. It was completely unplanned, yet extremely funny, as he had to quickly improvise when he essentially walked into Gwen (or swung in as it were) wearing his costume, while speaking to her on his cell phone. Regarding that whole Saturday morning thing, the writers are definitely having fun sneaking in fun lines of dialogue such as what Liz said when she saw Peter in the Spider-Man costume -- "You can web me up any time, Petey" -- which contain some appreciated innuendo for us older viewers.

The Green Goblin's chaos continued, as he kept targeting both Norman Osborn's company and The Big Man/Tombstone's organization – the show seems to have committed to making Tombstone The Big Man, so never mind my "maybe it's still Frederick Foswell!" speculation. The Goblin went so far as to kidnap Hammerhead, and once more, Spidey and Tombstone found themselves united against their mutual green foe.

Peter finds out another potential joy of wearing a Spider-Man costume

We got another amazing fight scene here, as Tombstone, the Goblin and Spidey all battled it out at a factory, while a tied up Hammerhead hung above molten lava and amusingly bemoaned, "this is so embarrassing." It's impressive to see how formidable a threat the Goblin has turned out to be, as he took on both of his powerful opponents without nary a worry, often having the upper hand and clearly being the one pursuing them, rather than vice versa. While Tombstone is someone who can survive it, you know the Goblin isn't kidding around, as he throws several razors into the big guy's back. Okay, Spider-Man saving himself via a bouncing web ball was pushing things a bit, but overall this was one hell of a fun fight.

Peter believed he'd figured out who the Goblin was – Norman Osborn. But when he arrived at the Osborn home, it was Harry he found dressed as the Goblin. Norman certainly played the part of a concerned father, saying Harry had stolen the experimental Goblin formula and begging Spider-Man not to turn Harry in, so he could help his son himself.

Of course there's no way Norman is to be trusted, and there's still a lot of reasons to think that Harry has been set up here. He remembered nothing of being the Goblin, and was completely disoriented. Yet we did see the Goblin and Norman face to face earlier, so what exactly is going on? Methinks Norman is not above manipulating and controlling his own son in order to have his plans come together. My money is still on Norman as the true Goblin, with Harry being used in the same way Ned Leeds was used by Roderick Kingsley in the Hobgoblin stories in the comics – Even if Harry's been the one (mostly) wearing the costume so far, he's not the true threat. Regardless of how it turns out, this is a complex and cool story the show is laying out.

There was also a subplot about John Jameson's space mission running into trouble, as their landing became increasingly dangerous. John himself was a bit too earnest for my tastes, but Jonah got some terrific material. First, we saw his truly loving side, as he worried about his son's fate. When John landed safely, it was funny to see Jonah put back on his "game face," as he was quickly screaming at his staff to get their story on the saved space shuttle up. But what really took Jonah to an interesting place was when he found out that the Bugle's cover story on the shuttle being saved got trounced by a competitor's story on the Spider-Man/Green Goblin fight. For Jonah, it was incredibly personal that his son, the NASA hero who nearly died, was ignored by the public, while Spider-Man got all the attention. This episode gave us the origin of Jonah's hatred of Spider-Man in perhaps the most understandable and best way it's ever been portrayed before.

All this, plus we saw the Black Cat walk by at Halloween (holding a bag that likely contained stolen goods methinks), and as expected, the final moments of the episode showed that John brought something back with him on his mission… something that should lead to Peter getting a costume change in the near future, if history repeats itself.